Podcasts Culture Point of Inquiry Rick Perlstein - Is There a Republican War on History?

Rick Perlstein - Is There a Republican War on History?

Published: June 20, 2011, 9:43 p.m.

Host: Chris Mooney

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Recently, we've seen a spate of news stories\u2014and news incidents\u2014involving conservative politicians and activists getting details wrong about American history.

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There was, most infamously, Sarah Palin\xa0saying that Paul Revere, on his famous midnight ride, rang bells and "warned the British."

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There was Michele Bachman,\xa0claiming that the founding fathers\xa0"worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." Actually, the constitution explicitly treated slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representatives to different states.

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And then was David Barton, conservatives' go-to guy on history,\xa0suggesting that Tom Paine\xa0was, basically, a supporter of creationism.

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To try to figure out what's going on lately with conservatives and history, we turn to a historian, Rick Perlstein. Perlstein is the author of several books including Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus, and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. He's also a regular contributor to a variety of publications including The American Prospect and Mother Jones.